Using Automator to Send Instapaper To The Kindle

You could have Instapaper do this automatically, but if you’re on a sporadic schedule (you don’t want it just weekly, or daily, but with some flexibility) you can make an Automator workflow to download the .mobi, email it to your Kindle, and delete the .mobi file you just downloaded.

Here’s what I did:

I know it’s dumb to upload a tall image like this, so here it is step by step.

Downloading and sending the .mobi file

This uses Mail.app, so if you don’t use that you’ll have to find some other way. You’ll also have to make sure that your Mail.app email account is authorized to send to your kindle.

Get specified URL. In this case we want “http://www.instapaper.com/mobi” which is the .mobi file for Kindles.

Download URLs. Could be whatever you want, I use an “inbox” folder for everything I download.

New mail message. Put your Kindle’s email address here. I also gussied it up with some variables to enter the day’s date in the subject line.

Send outgoing message.

The one downside here is that Mail.app comes to the front. I’d rather not have it activate, but I don’t know how to do that.

Cleaning up after yourself

This part feels a bit kludgy, but I can’t think of a better way. We want to find the .mobi file and send it to the trash.

Ignore the previous action’s input.

Get specified Finder items. I pointed it at the download folder from the previous part.

Get Folder contents.

Filter finder items. I search for files where the name contains Instapaper and the file extension is mobi

Move finder items to trash.

That’s essentially it, but I’ve also made this throw up a Growl notification.

This seems to work for me pretty well. I can run it from Launchbar while my morning coffee is brewing. Then I sit in my favorite recliner and turn my Kindle on for the latest delivery of Instapaper.